I donât know if itâll come across too well in photo form. I was lying
on the grass, as one does, and lo and
behold, there in the sky appeared what i could only describe as a double-backwards-double-rainbow:
Iâve never seen anything like it. Maybe that makes me a shut-in? I donât know. Some quick prodding
around revealed it to be not a rainbow, but a halo: a
circum-zenithal arc, its iridescent
colours made by the low sunâs light filtering through the icy clouds above.
The Sagrada Familia. The view from a Pennine peak. My home town from above, caught by pure chance on
a flight to Turkey. The first sight of the Tyne Bridge down Grey Street. And now this. Thatâs the
top tier â sights iâll never forget in my life.
Hello. Youâve probably figured this out by now, but my personal life has been getting quite busy at
the moment, and postings on the site will be taking a back seat until, hm, letâs say the end of June
or thenabouts. Donât call it a hiatus â itâs just a minor pause.
Iâve been hammering away at a big olâ 2022 recap post, trying to get it ready before itâs
irrelevant. It seemed cruel to leave you all with nowt over the new year, though, so i thought i
might send you some photos from a recent evening walk.
Ashington1 is a poor erstwhile mining town at the very tip-top of the local
conurbation, Newcastleâs last gasp before coal and collieries give way to princes and pastures. It
takes pride in two things: one, its mining history, and two, the fact that two Ashingtonians
delivered England the world cup in a final remembered by ever fewer people.
This is the Queen Elizabeth II Country Park â not to be confused with the
Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park
down in that London â a marvellous regeneration project which has turned a spoil heap into a lovely
lake complete with a Premier Inn. That purple light off in the distance is the
Woodhorn Colliery Museum, a
whistle-stop tour of Northumberlandâs mining history which apparently fancies itself the Blackpool
of the North.2
And thatâs all i wrote. Tune in next time for either another bashed-together filler postcard (by
Gods, am i going to have to make Blyth sound appealing next?), or the first annual Horny Awardsâą.
Weâll see how far the Procrastination Monster lets me progress. :â-)
Hello again. Itâs been a while, hasnât it? I went on a nice riverside walk and thought iâd send you
some photos. (Look, i was getting desperate and it was either this or a post about why seven is my
favourite number.)
Our scene today is the southern end of Bedlington, a reasonably sized and â if iâm to be honest â
terribly mediocre town right in the middle of that conurbation in the southeast of Northumberland.
Thankfully, weâre not going to concern ourselves with the town centre (a place whose selling points
are a Greggs and a void that used to be a Tesco) â no, weâre going down a steep and heavy slope
until we wind up on the steep banks of the river Blyth, where the local parish have kindly set up a
path. Wonât you join me?
Seeing this, i was simply overcome by the androgynous urge to stomp and plod around in a stream.
(Itâs what Hermaphroditos would have wanted.) Alas, my shoes were
terribly unfit for such activity, and i had to call it off for another day. A national tragedy!
About halfway down the river, thereâs this small leafy island that some ducks appear to have claimed
as their home. I would have admired it further, but i was being shadowed by by a couple with some
particularly yappy and aggressive dogs and really just wanted to get the whole predicament over
with.
Iâm not 100% sure whatâs going on with the pillar in the middle â itâs about where the path on the
opposite side comes to a sudden stop; perhaps it used to be the support for some kind of railway
bridge.
I did, i admit, have to trespass on a dam for this view â the ducks, i hope, would never be grasses.
Itâs just not in their DNA.
Some incredible visual storytelling here. Someoneâs drawn an owl saying âPeace!â, then someone else
has come and vandalised it with a swastika, then someone else went and turned the
swastika into something resembling the Windows logo. I donât know where âR.C.â comes into this, but
if they were the last fellow, i salute them. Truly, one of the heroes of our time.
(I was somewhat tempted to scribble over it myself and turn it into Loss.jpgâŠ)
Itâs the end of an era in Newcastle, however short it was, as the temporary
shipping container food courtâcumâpublic squareâcumâshopping centre Stack comes down after three
years. The former site of an Odeon cinema was set to be turned into a mixed-use development, but the
pandemic caused a change of direction from the developers. The plans have since been slimmed down to
just comprise what lockdown proved was truly, 100% necessary:
Offices.
Youâd never guess it, but this luscious green path (carefully cropped so that you donât see the
yawning gravel service road behind the camera) is on the former site of a colliery in
Bedlington. Thereâs not much left to see â the neighbouring pit town
was bulldozed in the â70s, and the farmers have done a bang-up job of hiding any traces of the mines that lie underneath.
After
2.3 million pounds
and a skyscraperâs worth of scaffolding, Morpethâs central station has finally been
restored to its former Georgian glory, red fences and all. The locals will be pleased to know that
Lumo, a sparkly new Ryanair-ified third-class train service from Edinburgh to London, have no choice
but to stop here thanks to a sharp bend in the track.
St Peterâs Marina confuses me. Itâs like someone dropped a quaint postwar Dutch town centre
in the middle of a grimy industrial waste, The river still stinks, and the architecture is â generally â an unconvincing pastiche. Just
who is living here?
I had some time to kill after buying my mam a present from Tynemouthâs station market and decided to
spend it by taking a walk in the golden hours of the day, now that spring is coming around and the
weather isnât quite so permanently miserable. I thought i might show you some photos.